Phoebe Bridgers is competing for the 2021 Grammy Awards’ Best New Artist crown. Learn more about the indie rock and folk musician before her big night.
Phoebe Bridgers is one of the eight artists competing for the 2021 Grammys’ Best New Artist title on March 14. The 26-year-old musician has become a sensation in the indie rock scene thanks to songs like “Motion Sickness,” “Kyoto” and more tracks reveled for their melancholic lyrics. Before the Grammys, Phoebe — known for donning her trademark skeleton suit — caused buzz for being Saturday Night Live‘s musical guest in Feb. 2021.
As a solo artist and member of the musical groups boygenius and Better Oblivion Community Center, Phoebe has made her way in the music industry and things only seem to keep going up for her. Here are five things you should know about Phoebe, her career, and her life:
Phoebe Bridgers Was Nominated For 4 Grammy Awards In 2021
Phoebe was nominated in the categories of Best New Artist, Best Alternative Music Artist for her 2020 album, Punisher, and Best Rock Performance and Best Rock Song for her song “Kyoto.” The Grammys ceremony is set to take place on March 14, 2021.
Phoebe Bridgers’ Debut Album Was Released In 2017
Stranger in the Alps was released on Sept. 22, 2017 after Phoebe signed to Dead Oceans, an independent record label. It received many positive reviews and was followed up with her sophomore album, Punisher in 2020. In 2018, she joined Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus to form the musical group, boygenius, and an EP by the group was released in Oct. 2018. Around the same time, she teamed up with Conor Oberst of Bright Eyes to form the musical group, Better Oblivion Community Center, and they released a debut album in Jan. 2019.
Phoebe Bridgers Has Spoken Out Against Her Past Relationship With Ryan Adams
Phoebe and Ryan Adams first met through mutual collaborator Harrison Whitford and he went on to produce her major label debut 7″, Killer, on his record label, PAX AM in 2014. During their time working together, they started a romantic relationship, but in 2019, she, along with other women he was involved with, such as Mandy Moore, who he was married to from 2009 until 2016 (they announced a separation in 2015), accused him of abuse. Phoebe claimed their “whirlwind” relationship ended after only a few weeks when he allegedly became “emotionally abusive.”
Phoebe also claimed that Ryan stopped helping her professionally after she broke up with him and said that he exposed himself one day in 2017 when she was opening up for him on tour. “The first day, he asked me to bring him something in his hotel room. I came upstairs and he was completely nude,” she said, in a New York Times report . Ryan’s lawyer denied this and described their romance as “a brief, consensual fling.”
She also took to Instagram in Feb. 2019 to share a post addressing the situation.
Phoebe Bridgers Met Her Future Music Partner, Conor Oberst, In 2016
Phoebe first met Conor, who she later started a group with, in the summer of 2016. She was playing a secret show that was hosted by him at The Bootleg Theater in Los Angeles, CA and they clicked enough to end up collaborating together. In Mar. 2020, after the coronavirus started making its way across the U.S., the theater was in danger of being closed, and Phoebe took to Twitter to ask for donations and share a video of herself playing guitar and singing Conor’s solo song “Mamah Borthwick (a Sketch)” from 2016’s Ruminations.
“if you can, donate to save the venue where I met conor. here’s a conor song,” she wrote in the tweet along with a link to the GoFundMe page for the venue.
Phoebe Bridgers Revealed How She Maintains Her Trademark Hair Platinum Blonde
Phoebe “dyes her hair frequently”, according to The Ringer, and presents herself as “a goth who doesn’t make goth music” but still always wears black. “My best friend in high school had shaved eyebrows and was super, super goth and drew on her eyebrows with eyeliner every day. And I’ve always kinda wanted to be goth, but I had a lot of secondhand clothes and not a ton of money, so I had a very weird high school aesthetic,” she told the outlet in June 2020. “And then when I graduated and started making money, I was like, ‘I’m only buying black clothes from now on. Plus the occasional wedding dress.”